SEC Releases Annual Registered Investment Company Update

Who may be interested: Registered Investment Companies; Registered Investment Advisers; Boards of Directors; Portfolio Managers.

Quick Take: The staff of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management (Staff) published its Annual Registered Investment Company Update (Report) which contains statistics and analysis based on Form N-CEN data received from Registered Investment Companies (Funds) covering the years 2019 through 2024.

The Report provides the investing public with updated key Fund industry information. The Report contains data covering (1) the number of Funds in the industry, (2) the aggregate average total net assets, (3) the number of Funds that relied upon rules or exemptions under the 1940 Act, (4) the frequency of use of, and reliance on, securities lending, (5) the availability of lines of credit for Funds, and (6) third-party services. The data covering each of these topics is split into a variety of tables, each showing a different subset or a different characteristic for the past six fiscal years, illustrating significant trends as they evolved.

Key take-aways are highlighted below:

• Number of Funds, by Registrant Type and Fund Category
  • From 2023 to 2024, the total number of Funds has declined from 14,080 (a previous high over the current 6-year period) to 13,679, which is lower than every other year represented besides 2020 (the year of the coronavirus pandemic). This decline is not attributable to one specific Registrant Type or Fund Category, as the majority of all of the fund categories represented reflected a decline, and there was a total decline in the tables for each Registrant Type, including a slight decline in ETFs from 2023 to 2024. On the other hand, there was a slight increase in interval funds over the same period.
• Aggregate Average Total Net Assets (“ATNA”)
  • The ATNA increased in 2024 to $41.5 Trillion across all Registrant Types, representing a record high over the previous 6 years. The biggest increase in ATNA was seen by unit investment trusts, which saw a 32.48% increase from 2023 to 2024. Additionally, N-1A Registrants saw a significant uptick in ATNA, reaching its own record high of ATNA over the past 6 years.
• Securities Lending
  • The total number of Funds lending portfolio securities declined in 2024, dropping from 5,565 to 5,435. Despite this drop in the number of Funds lending securities, there was a rise in ATNA of the Funds lending securities. This number increased from $20.9 trillion to $22.2 trillion, which was a new high over the past 6 years.

The Report can be found here.